Is it forgiveness? Probably not.

I mentioned in passing that the former Director of my children’s orphanage had been arrested. I got about ten emails asking me what is going on with his case. I’m sorry I didn’t clarify. Honestly, it’s the same thing that always happens. Director gets arrested, Director answers some questions, Director is released. It’s the same story every time. Not surprising. So, I don’t address it much anymore.

Honestly, I don’t care. I know. Can you believe it? I was like a fountain of hate for this man. But, over the last few months, I have realized that this man is one of about one million men all over the world who use and manipulate children for their personal gain. I don’t have the answer for why this happens except that this is the cycle of poverty. Extreme poverty leads to extreme desperation. He, apparently, was desperate enough to abuse children (and by extension our trust) to somehow try to ensure his financial security. It didn’t happen. His future is more uncertain than ever. No one in the community trusts him anymore, he has lost his membership to the church he professed to love. He is ruined. Am I happy about that? No. Does he deserve it? Absolutely. I don’t pretend to know why he did the things he did. Life would have been so much easier if he had just been honest. I wouldn’t have had to stop all the funding that was coming to him. None of the families would have had to report him to Ghanaian Social Welfare. He would have had security. He lost all that. Now, it’s up to Ghana to decide what to do with him. He will never run an orphanage again. He will never broker an adoption to the U.S. again. Will he ever be able to enter our borders and hurt my children? No. His visa to the U.S. will never come. Will he continue to abuse and manipulate children in Ghana? Probably. But, a lot of the adoptive parents that he “helped” are watching him. His former church is watching him. Ultimately, it is up to Ghana’s justice system to decide the punishment that will fit his crime. It is not my job to tell Ghana how to run their government. I fought to hand them every piece of proof I had, now the ball is in their court. This is Ghana, nothing moves swiftly there. Frankly, I don’t expect it to move at all. He brokered a lot of adoptions. While he doesn’t have any of my charitable donations, he has all the money that FPD and I paid him to assist us with our adoptions. It will take awhile for that money to run out. Eventually it will. He will be left with nothing.

It took me a very long time to get to the point where I could hear the name of this broken man and not feel hatred welling up inside of me. He abused my daughter. He, and his wife, beat and tortured her behind my back to the point that she will have life long effects. Then they lied to me about it, every day, for a year. How do you come back from that? How do you forgive someone who took a piece of your daughter that you might never get back? The answer is… I don’t know. I don’t care what happens to him anymore, because I know he is being punished. I know he will be held accountable, every single day, for the rest of his life. He has created his own hell for himself, right here on earth. He is poor, he is ruined, he is broken.

My daughter is not…

She is funny, she is happy, she is healing. I am able to forget and not care what happens to the people in Ghana that did this to her. I get to be with her every day. I get to watch her grow and heal. She has a bright, promising future. He does not. This is my justice. Is this forgiveness? No. I’ll let you know when I reach that point. I pray that I’ll get there, eventually. But, it won’t be today, or tomorrow or maybe even a year from now. I guess I’ll know forgiveness when I see it. I don’t see it yet. Right now, we’re just learning to live with it.

I don’t believe that I should be the judge or jury for anyone who was involved in these corrupt adoptions, people of authority will decide how to handle that. It’s not my place. But, there are families that continue to be hurt by the fall out of this. These are families who are where FPD and I were six months ago, praying their children home. But, the control to do that is being taken away by people an ocean away. People who have no clue what they’re doing. FPD and I owe it to the people who helped get our Duo here, and the ones who prayed us home, to do the same for them. There are kids over there who need to get to their families. It shouldn’t be so hard. These families are working hard to do their adoptions totally legally, just like I did when I was in Ghana for nearly a month. It shouldn’t take this long. It shouldn’t be this hard to adopt a child who truly needs a family.